The BBC reports that an arrest warrant has been issued in Sweden for the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, on charges of “rape and molestation”. Assange was in the country last week to talk about his work with the whistleblowing website.
Last month, WikiLeaks published more than 90,000 secret US military documents relating to the war in Afghanistan, many of which detailed civilian deaths and targeted assassinations. As John Pilger reported in his recent NS column, US officials have vowed to hunt down Assange and discredit his organisation in revenge for publishing the documents:
In Washington, I interviewed a senior official in the defence department and asked: “Can you give a guarantee that the editors of WikiLeaks and the editor-in-chief, who is not American, will not be subjected to the kind of manhunt that we read about in the media?” He replied: “It’s not my position to give guarantees on anything.”
[. . .]A Pentagon document states bluntly that US intelligence intends to “fatally marginalise” WikiLeaks. The preferred tactic is smear, with corporate journalists ever ready to play their part.
So far, little information about the rape allegations, which were made in the Swedish tabloid Expressen, has emerged. Assange, communicating via the WikiLeaks Twitter feed, said he had been warned of a “dirty tricks” campaign.
In another message, he said: “the charges are without basis and their issue at this moment is deeply disturbing.” Assange had recently signed up as a star columnist with the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, which has now suspended the arrangement.
The legal blogger Jack of Kent makes the point that scepticism about the timing of the allegations does not mean that any rape complainant should automatically be branded a “liar”:
The better response to this emerging news is not to jettison our liberal value of taking allegations of rape seriously and treating the alleged victim with appropriate respect.
[. . .]The defendant should now have the presumption of innocence until proved guilty; and during this process, assumptions about culpability and credibility, either of the defendant or the alleged victim, should not be too readily made by the rest of us.
UPDATE: The Swedish Prosecution Authority has now cancelled the arrest warrant. According to the BBC: “The Swedish Prosecution Authority website said the chief prosecutor had come to the decision that Mr Assange was not suspected of rape but did not give any further explanation.”
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